Critical strike
Base chance to crit in Melee For melee attacks with weapons, the chance to crit is based on agility, and critical strikes deal +100% normal damage (=200%). To see your chance to crit, open your spellbook, and hover your mouse over the "attack" ability. The tooltip will show your percent chance to crit. The formula is generated as follows: * Crit + Modifier + Bonuses The base chance to achieve a melee critical hit for each class (at level 60) is: * Rogue = AGI/29% * Hunter = AGI/53% * All others = AGI/20% * Mobs always have a 5% base melee critical chance. This chance is further modified by the difference between your current Attack rating and the Defense rating of your target. The game tooltip assumes an even level opponent with a Defense rating equal to * 5. Normally, your Attack rating is equal to your skill rating with the type of weapon you are wielding. The formula is as follows: * rating - Defense Rating)/25% Please note that the agility requirement for a crit percentage is lower at lower levels... so an AGI which grants you 10% to crit at level 30 will not grant you the same at level 60. Equipment which increases critical hit rate stacks together, so it is possible to achieve relatively high critical hit rates. A non-spell attack on a sitting target will always be a critical hit. Base chance to crit with Spells For spells, the chance to crit is based on intellect. Critical damage spells deal +50% normal damage (=150%). Critical heals will heal +50% their normal amount (=150%). There is currently no way to see your chance to crit with spells. The base chance for a spell critical hit for each class is : ** Druid INT/?39.5?% ** Mage INT/59.5% ** Paladin INT/29.5% ** Priest INT/?59.5?% ** Shaman INT/39.5% ** Warlock INT/?49.5?% This is currently a very heavily debated topic, thus the question marks. If a class is listed without the question marks, there has been several confirmed reports at the listed number. If there is a question mark for your class please help out and run some tests for us. The biggest question lies in Paladins and Druids crit ration. Some believe paladins yield 1% crit per 20 int, some say 30, and now some people are saying 39.5. Druids also have varying answers, but the most commonly quoted numbers are starting to be 39.5. This basically means Cloth casters are on a 60:1 crit ratio (per intellect point) and Hybrid casters are on a 40:1 ratio (per intellect point). Tests are still being done to confirm these findings. ---------------------------------- Tests: Paladin: LumberLamer tested as a lvl 60 dwarf paladin. With 215 intelligence and no crit items or talents, 566 flash heal rank 1 resulted in 35 critical heals (6.18%). Unequipped, with 76 intelligence, 20 of 576 spells were critical (3,47%). Extrapolating that would mean 0 intelligence would have 1.98% to crit, and each 51.92 INT would add 1% chance to crit. Semaj used 1200 flash of lights with no gear and 1200 with full gear. His results suggest that 0 INT would = 0% crit rate and every 29.5 INT = 1% crit for paladins. Shaman: Aryxymaraki tested the ratio using 400 casts of HW with naked int, 400 casts with half-gear, and 400 casts with full gear. He arrived at 39.5 INT = 1% crit. Warlock: Dzra tested as a lvl60 Human Warlock. With 284 Intellect, 4% to crit from gear, and 5% to crit from talents, ~1000 Shadowbolts cast gave a percent to crit around 14.7% (against level 59-60 mobs). Using this information, he concluded that 49.5 INT = 1% crit for lvl60 Warlocks. ---------------------------------- Can Crits miss or not? The only real source for answer of this question is this Blizzard post. There exist two ways to interprete it. One school claims that the half-sentence "if you have a 5% crit rate, that 5% chance includes misses" means that a crit can be a miss, so if you have a 10% crit chance, and 5% miss chance, only 8 swings out of 100 will crit in the average. This means that each swing can be either a hit or a miss, and crits are calculated completely independently. This is generally agreed to be correct, as many crit modifying spells within the game (such as the rogue spell Cold Blood) can miss. The other school claims that the mathematical formulas given later in the post make clear that crits may never miss, and that a swing can have exactly one of three outcomes - crit, hit or miss. The probability for each of these three is calculated separate, the only restriction is that their sum has to be 100%. Since the verbiage in the first part of the post can be interpreted, and the formulas are rather clear and consistent, it seems to be consensus that the second interpretation is correct. An interpretation of the Blue post can be attempted with the following steps: # "The crit rate includes misses" is a contradiction to the assumption that crits, his and misses are the three possible, separate outcomes of a swing. # Replacing "misses" by "swings that do not connect at all" yields: "The crit rate includes swings that do not connect at all". # This version of the sentence matches the formulas This rather formal way of interpretation assumes a little slip in the natural language used by Blizzard. If there are three different outcomes, replacing "miss" with "not a hit" is mathematically a severe error. In natual language though it's only a slight imprecision. In other words, Blizzard uses the term "miss" a little loose, they mean it to include all swings which are not crits. Example of the Three Outcomes interpretation Consider an orc with a knife, and that orc swings it at a dwarf who is sleeping (and cannot react defensively). There are exactly three possible things that can happen. # He can stab the dwarf in the arm, and normally damage him. # He can poke the dwarf in the eye, and critically damage him. # He can miss entirely, causing no damage. A crit cannot convert to a miss or hit: If his swing pokes the dwarf in the eye, there is no chance that the orc will miss entirely on that swing. There is also no chance that that swing will instead stab the dwarf in the arm. A hit cannot convert to a miss or a crit: If his swing stabs the dwarf in the arm, there is no chance that the orc will miss entirely on that swing. There is also no chance that that swing will instead poke the dwarf in the eye. A miss cannot convert to a hit or crit: If his swing misses entirely, there is no chance that the swing will instead stab the dwarf in the arm. There is also no chance that that swing will instead poke the dwarf in the eye. (This should be easy to verify with some testing on a Mage/Shaman with Combustion/Elemental Mastery as they will guarantee a crit. Unless ofc Blizzard have made some type of hack with the possibilities for miss on those abilities.) Chances to Crit, Hit and Miss Thus we assume that melee attack can have exactly one of the following results: *Critical Hit *Normal Hit *Miss The probabilities for these three results are independent of each other, except for the requirement that the sum must be 100%. If the game's tooltip says a character's critical hit rate is 5%, they will crit 5% of all attacks (vs. an opponent with the same defense skill as the attacker's weapon skill). Modifier to Crit Plusses to Crit simply affect the probability to acheive a critical hit. They do nothing to the miss rate, thus they decrease the Hit rate. This seems to be strange at first, but it's WoW's way to express the concept that critical hits must also be normal hits. The difference between opponents defense skill and attackers weapon skill will modify the critical hit chance by 0.04% per point of difference. So, for example, if a Rogue with 300 dagger skill is attacking a Mob with 325 defense skill, the rogue's crit rate will be decreased by 1%. Be aware though that +Defense in this context does not apply to PvP. It will not reduce a critical hit chance between players, only vs. PvE mobs. Modifier to Hit Plusses to Hit in increase the probability to get a non-critical hit. They do nothing to your chance to Crit and they decrease your chance to Miss. The base miss chance vs. an even level opponent is 5%. It is modified by the level difference. It rises quickly for mobs in PvE, but it rises much more slowly for other characters in PvP. The minimum miss chance is 0% on instant attacks. For each increased weapon skill you get 0,04% more hit chance, but for each defence point the attacked gets, your hit chance is reduced by 0,04%. So against a level 63 mob, you would maximum want +5,6% hit, and for dual wielders you would maximum want +24,6% hit. The cap for the miss chance is 60% (this cap is not confirmed. Can anyone add a link or elaborate?). If due to large negative modifiers, your chance to Hit becomes negative, the negative amount is deduced from your chance to Crit. Defensive Reactions WoW, like many other games, makes use of a table based combat scheme (where one roll determines the outcome of a swing), so percentages are absolute. Refer to the separate section for details on each defensive reaction: # Parry # Dodge # Block Formulas for Melee combat If adding some crit or hit modifier, the following formulas can be used: *New crit rate = (Original crit%) + (change to crit %) *New miss rate = (Original miss%) - (change to hit%) *New hit rate = (Original hit%) - (change to crit %) + (change to hit) What's better: +Hit% or +Crit% with spells? Spell crits do +50% spell damage unless you talent to increase this effect. Spell hits do +100% spell damage. So in terms of total damage output the +hit with spells will be more efficacious untill you have reduced your chance to miss that mob to the minimum. If you have talents such as ruin that increase crit damage then the total added damage is the same and +crit and +hit are equivalent in terms of damage added. That being said, keep in mind the situation. If you want burst damage such as pvp encounters it may be better to have +crit, and in PvE encounters where aggro must be avoided it would be better to have +hit. What's better: +Hit% or +Crit% with physical? The following section is incorrect and misleading against mobs that have glancing blows. Please see Formulas:Weapon_Skill for more discussion. In addition, Miss chance is 5% for 2h, 5% for 1h + shield, 24% for dual wield +.2%(0,04*5) for each level the target is over you Finally, Dodge, Parry, Block are also not included making this table pretty useless. All of the calculations are completely incorrect regardless of level of target. This section requires massive editing. Consider the following table: Now assume your weapon does 100 points of base damage, before modification, you will do (5 * 200 + 80 * 100) = 9000 damage over 100 swings. With +5% to crit, the result is (10 * 200 + 75* 100) = 9500 damage over 100 swings. With 5% to hit, the damage figure is (5 * 200 + 85 * 100) = 9500 damage over 100 swings. So all other things being equal, probabilities to hit and to crit increase your damage output for exactly the same amount. Differences only arise from effects which require hits or crits (like some abilities or procs). Also keep in mind that your base chance to miss an equal-level mob is only 5%. The common consensus is that +6% is the desirable maximum for +hit%. Examples Let's say a rogue with 300 weapon skill attacks an opponent with 310 defense skill. The rogue has a base 20% crit chance, a 25% miss chance and then the rogue equips items that give an additional +5% toHit and +5% crit. The victim has a 10% chance to dodge, a 10% chance to parry, but doesn't have a sheild. This will result in the following: *Crit: 20% + (-0.4%) + 5% = 24.6% *Miss: 25% - 5% + 10% + 10% = 40% *Hit: 55% - (-0.4%) + 5% - 5% - 10% - 10% = 35.4% If the victim was rogue who activated Evasion, his dodge chance would jump by 50%. If the attacker was also a rogue, and activated Improved Backstab his crit rate would jump by 30% crit rate, the numbers would become: *Crit: 24.6% + 30% = 54.6% *Miss: 40% + 50% = 90% *Hit: 35.4% - 30% - 50% = -44.6% Obviously the new numbers make no sense. That's because the miss chance is capped at 60% and when there is no chance of score a regular hit, miss chance will consume crit chances. So in the case the numbers get modified by the caps: *New crit chance: 40% *New miss chance: 60% *New hit chance: 0% This example doesn't actually work, because backstab must be performed from behind the target and characters can't dodge, parry or block attacks from behind. Links This Blizzard post is the base of all our knowledge. Slant's To-Hit FAQ can be found in the Ultimate Rogue FAQ. Mizzajl's Critical_hit_table. Category:Formulas and Game Mechanics